In the past five years, the Cazenovia Central School District has lost $6.2 million dollars in state aid, due to the way the state legislature and governor divvy up money at budget time using the state’s Gap Elimination Adjustment program. Cazenovia has survived the low funding coupled with increased unfunded state mandates by cutting programs and staff, increasing the district tax levy and using up its reserve funds.
But now, coming into the school year 2015-16 budgeting process, Cazenovia is nearly out of money with nothing left to cut.
The board of education and district administration are fighting back with a new effort to make Cazenovia heard throughout the halls of the state capitol.
“Sometimes there are issues that are urgent, and there are issues that are important — this is both urgent and important,” said Superintendent Matt Reilly.
“We are asking people to make some noise; the squeaky wheel gets the grease,” said BOE President Pat Vogl.
The Gap Elimination Adjustment (GEA) was first introduced for the 2010-11 fiscal year by former Gov. David Paterson as a way to help close New York’s then $10 billion budget deficit. Under the legislation, a portion of the state’s funding shortfall is divided among all school districts in New York based on a formula, and each district’s state aid is then reduced accordingly.
Essentially, the state allocates a certain amount of aid to schools each year, then takes away a portion of that aid through the GEA.
The GEA was initially stated to be a temporary program, but it has continued unabated with no end in sight.
According to the New York State School Boards Association, The Gap Elimination Adjustment has meant a reduction in state aid to schools during the four-year period from 2010-11 through 2013-14 of nearly $8.5 billion. That is an average of nearly $12.6 million per district over the four-year period — an average of $3.1 million per year. These cuts in state aid to schools have caused many districts to cut educational programs and staff. Large percentages of districts also said they had to increase class sizes (53 percent of districts), reduce electives (44 percent) and reduce or eliminate extracurricular activities such as athletics (36 percent).
Without an end to the GEA, districts across the state will continue to see the quality of their educations deteriorate as their finances fall into ruin, according to the NYSSBA.
“A lot of districts are in real trouble, if not of going into fiscal insolvency, then of going into programmatic insolvency,” said Central New York School Boards Association Executive Director Charles Borgognoni earlier this year as the organization prepared to hold a pair of public forums in the Syracuse area on the issue. “Schools won’t have the funds to fulfill their mission of educating children.”
Cazenovia has been cutting programs and staff, raising taxes and using reserve funds to make up for the lost state aid for years. These actions — particularly the use of reserve funds — led Cazenovia in January 2014 to be declared a district “susceptible to fiscal stress” in the Fiscal Stress Monitoring System report released by State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli — the first time Cazenovia had ever been on the stress list.
The district’s 2014-15 budget, passed by voters this past May, included a 1.01 percent property tax increase and the elimination of 9.4 full-time equivalent (FTE) staff positions. The district also used $750,000 in reserve funds to fill the budget gap.
During the summer of 2014, the school board began discussing the need to be more vocal in Albany about Cazenovia receiving its fair share of state aid funding. Part of that advocacy strategy was to get the Cazenovia community more educated and involved in the issue.
On Sept. 15, the board unanimously adopted a resolution calling on the New York State Legislature to end Gap Elimination Adjustments when adopting New York State’s 2015-16 Annual Budget.
The Cazenovia Central School District administration will hold three community forums on Monday, Jan. 5, Superintendent Matt Reilly has announced. The forums will be held at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. in the high school library and at 6:30 p.m. in the district office. Typically, the January public forums discuss the upcoming district budget.
At its Oct. 20 meeting, the board talked with local communications expert David St. John about how best to coordinate a legislative lobbying strategy on behalf of the district to receive more state aid funding in 2015-16. The discussion centered on how to get district residents more educated and involved in advocating for greater state funding from Cazenovia’s state legislators.
“Financially, we’re pretty straddled. We’re trying to make a difference and go after the money that’s due to our district,” said board member Lisa Lounsbury during the board’s Dec. 15 regular monthly meeting. Lounsbury, who is on the board’s GEA Committee, gave the full board an update on the committee’s progress in gathering community and stakeholder groups together to help advocate for the district.
“Essentially, we need to make some noise in Cazenovia on a local level,” Lounsbury said. “As a school district we are dependent on state funding — that’s just how it is. We’ve lost $6.2 million over five years, and we’ve almost depleted our reserve funds.”
One of the major problems with the way state aid for education is handed out each year is that the process is simply unfair, with New York City and downstate district receiving a majority of the funds, proponents of eliminating the GEA have been saying for years.
“The distribution of these monies is not equitable … it’s based on politics,” Reilly said. “But we can make a difference if we’re vocal, if we’re united.”
Lounsbury said the board will release more information on the effect of the GEA on Cazenovia and the need for community involvement in the near future, and the board has scheduled meetings with the district’s local state legislators in coming weeks.
Jason Emerson is editor of the Cazenovia Republican. He can be reached at [email protected].
